Mitigating the Impact of Outlier Channels for Language Model Quantization with Activation Regularization
We consider the problem of accurate quantization for language models, where both the weights and activations are quantized to 4 bits per parameter with uniform quantization, the lowest bitwidth format natively supported by existing GPU hardware. In this context, the key challenge is activation quant...
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Thesis |
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2024
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/156280 |
| _version_ | 1826217528438816768 |
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| author | Nrusimha, Aniruddha |
| author2 | Kim, Yoon |
| author_facet | Kim, Yoon Nrusimha, Aniruddha |
| author_sort | Nrusimha, Aniruddha |
| collection | MIT |
| description | We consider the problem of accurate quantization for language models, where both the weights and activations are quantized to 4 bits per parameter with uniform quantization, the lowest bitwidth format natively supported by existing GPU hardware. In this context, the key challenge is activation quantization: it is known that language models contain outlier channels whose values on average are orders of magnitude higher than than other channels, which prevents accurate low-bitwidth quantization with known techniques. We systematically study this phenomena and find that these outlier channels emerge early in training, and that they occur more frequently in layers with residual streams. We then propose a simple strategy which regularizes a layer’s inputs via quantization-aware training (QAT) and its outputs via activation kurtosis regularization. We show that regularizing both the inputs and outputs is crucial for preventing a model’s "migrating" the difficulty in input quantization to the weights, which makes post-training quantization (PTQ) of weights more difficult. When combined with weight PTQ, we show that our approach can obtain a W4A4 model with integer quantization that performs competitively to the standard-precision W16A16 baseline.1 |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T17:05:06Z |
| format | Thesis |
| id | mit-1721.1/156280 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T17:05:06Z |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| publisher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1562802024-08-22T03:01:23Z Mitigating the Impact of Outlier Channels for Language Model Quantization with Activation Regularization Nrusimha, Aniruddha Kim, Yoon Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science We consider the problem of accurate quantization for language models, where both the weights and activations are quantized to 4 bits per parameter with uniform quantization, the lowest bitwidth format natively supported by existing GPU hardware. In this context, the key challenge is activation quantization: it is known that language models contain outlier channels whose values on average are orders of magnitude higher than than other channels, which prevents accurate low-bitwidth quantization with known techniques. We systematically study this phenomena and find that these outlier channels emerge early in training, and that they occur more frequently in layers with residual streams. We then propose a simple strategy which regularizes a layer’s inputs via quantization-aware training (QAT) and its outputs via activation kurtosis regularization. We show that regularizing both the inputs and outputs is crucial for preventing a model’s "migrating" the difficulty in input quantization to the weights, which makes post-training quantization (PTQ) of weights more difficult. When combined with weight PTQ, we show that our approach can obtain a W4A4 model with integer quantization that performs competitively to the standard-precision W16A16 baseline.1 S.M. 2024-08-21T18:53:35Z 2024-08-21T18:53:35Z 2024-05 2024-07-10T12:59:47.470Z Thesis https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/156280 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) Copyright retained by author(s) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| spellingShingle | Nrusimha, Aniruddha Mitigating the Impact of Outlier Channels for Language Model Quantization with Activation Regularization |
| title | Mitigating the Impact of Outlier Channels for Language Model Quantization with Activation Regularization |
| title_full | Mitigating the Impact of Outlier Channels for Language Model Quantization with Activation Regularization |
| title_fullStr | Mitigating the Impact of Outlier Channels for Language Model Quantization with Activation Regularization |
| title_full_unstemmed | Mitigating the Impact of Outlier Channels for Language Model Quantization with Activation Regularization |
| title_short | Mitigating the Impact of Outlier Channels for Language Model Quantization with Activation Regularization |
| title_sort | mitigating the impact of outlier channels for language model quantization with activation regularization |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/156280 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT nrusimhaaniruddha mitigatingtheimpactofoutlierchannelsforlanguagemodelquantizationwithactivationregularization |